Fossil gas is largely supplied to the EU by foreign authoritarian regimes (Norway being an exception), and biomass use at the industrial scale destroys forests and undermines the EU’s land sink. Increasingly, however, super-efficient, domestic and decarbonised heat generation is coming online in Europe in the form of large heat pumps powering district heating networks.
According to the European Commission, in 2021 district heating (local heat distribution networks) provided about 12% of the final energy use for space and water heating at the EU level; capacity is expected to increase by at least 80% by 2030.1 The development of large-scale heat pumps is fast evolving, with most of these innovative installations produced by European companies. Northern and Eastern Europe, which also rely a lot on biomass, are the continent’s largest district heating users. Large-scale heat pumps are helping district heating networks source heat from industrial and wastewater installations, data centres, and to collect thermal energy from rivers and seas in addition to ambient energy.
Can large heat pumps displace polluting combustion sources such as fossil fuels and bioenergy in the EU?
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The city of Helsinki (Finland) announced in 2024 that its municipal energy utility, Helen Oy, was building the (then) world’s largest air-to-water heat pump in the Patola neighbourhood. Helsinki ruled out biomass options for this project, citing the pressure it would put on Finland’s forestry sector. To be powered by electricity from renewable sources, the 33 MW heat pump – large enough to warm 30,000 homes – is expected to start providing heat from the end of 2026. Helen Oy is converting an existing coal-fired power plant in Helsinki to wood pellets as backup, a “transitional solution” until they can “discontinue combustion-based energy production completely”, as planned by 2040.
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Denmark’s Greater Copenhagen Utility (HOFOR) is electrifying its district heating network, which until now relied on biomass and waste combustion. Central to this initiative is the installation of several innovative heat pumps – three are already installed, and 3 billion Danish krone (EUR 402 million/USD 418 million) will be invested across 10 heat-pump projects by 2033. These projects should provide 300 MW of heating capacity, reducing Copenhagen’s reliance on biomass in district heating by approximately one-third.
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After years of civil society protests, in December 2024 Germany’s Hamburg utility announced that it would drop the country’s largest planned coal-to-biomass conversion, Tiefstack coal-fired power plant, citing rising biomass sustainability concerns and excessive conversion costs. Instead, they will build two large river heat pumps, and collect waste heat from industries and geothermal heat, and construct a large heat storage …. The planned gas portion of the Tiefstack conversion will still happen, unfortunately: more efficient than coal, but still fossil emissions.
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In Cologne, RheinEnergie commissioned a 150 MW fluvial heat pump system at the Cologne-Niehl power plant, which will extract thermal energy from the Rhine River to provide district heating to approximately 50,000 households. The EUR 280-million project is expected to reduce CO₂ emissions by 100,000 tons annually upon completion in 2027. (River heat pumps can both limit river waters warming and be quite disruptive to aquatic ecosystems, depending on how they are set up.)
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Vienna, Austria, is undertaking a huge, EUR 21 billion overhaul of its district heating system through massive geothermal, heat pumps and energy efficiency initiatives that will double the number of homes currently served by the city’s district heating network. The overhaul took on new urgency after the Austrian capital announced, last year, that it would cut itself off from Russian gas in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine. In the neighbouring city of Korneuburg, the company EVN is planning to install a water-to-water heat pump at its biomass district heating plant. The heat pump will use the Danube River as a heat source and be powered by green electricity, replacing natural gas. By 2040, the country plans to invest in heat pumps and geothermal more than twice what it invests in biomass, but unfortunately will still increase the absolute amounts of wood to be burnt for district heating.
Noteworthy large heat-pump projects for district heating are underway in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Aarhus, London, Paris, Lyon, Zurich…
Such projects considerably reduce the EU’s district heating industry’s reliance on combustion sources, thereby reducing the sector’s air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. But increases in biomass use are still planned (Austria, France) – something that the EU’s renewable energy policy should address by dropping its unfortunate “technology neutral” approach to co-funding biomass projects. Could such large heat pumps displace biomass in district heating, overall, and reduce fossil fuel use? The strategies in Finland and Denmark are encouraging, but reliable updated data at the aggregated level are elusive; tips welcome!
1 According to the Brussels-based EU trade association, EuroHeat & Power
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